He did this just before prayers.

As we enter the room, father's eyes fall on it.
"What is _that_ ?" he cries, pointing with his forefinger, and turning severely to the boys.

"How many times have I told you that I will not have parcels left about, littering the whole place?
Off with it!" "If you please, father," say I, in a very small and starved voice, "it is not the boys', it is _mine_." "_Yours_, is it ?" with a sudden change of tone, and return to amenity.
"Oh, all right!" (Then, with a little accent of sudden jocosity)--"One of your foreign purchases, eh ?" We sit round the snowy table, in the pleasant light of the shaded lamps, eating chicken-salad, and abasing and rifling the great red pyramids of strawberries and raspberries, but talking not much.

We young ones never _can_ talk out loud before father.

He has never heard our voices raised much above a whisper.